Anime to watch update 2.

The more of the new anime I watch, the more I realize that just like Western television, anime seasons will present a slew of new and continuing shows and only 1 out of maybe 10 will be good. Quite a few more cuts from the list, if you don't see me talk about an anime then it's safe to assume that I'm probably not watching it anymore.

Tokyo Ghoul

Status: 

I think more than anything, this series has surprised me. It's not often that we deal with the idea of people getting eaten....well we used to not have to think about that until Attack on Titan came around. Not only that but it promises to have some very awesome fight scenes. Really hope this one is around for a while. 

Tokyo ESP

Status: Has no good images for me to use as a status picture! Still good though. 

This one I'm still on the fence, mainly due to the fact that it feels like we have two first episodes. Official episode 1 shows us a terrorist attack on Christmas and episode 2 shows us when the main character gets her powers. A lot has yet to be established so I'm still trying to figure out what type of show this one is going to be. Looking forward to it though. 

Argevollen

Status: 

I made it through three episodes of this show and I can safely say that I will not be watching this one any more. There where three things about this show that made me dislike it. 
1. Cliche Main Character
       If you've watched any TV during the last 10 years, you already know the main character of this anime. He's the green soldier who doesn't understand war and goes out of his way to try to save everyone. Been there. Done that. Boring.
2. My robot connects to my mind!
       Again, another major plot point that we've seen a million times before. NEXT!
3. WHY DO THESE PEOPLE NEVER FACE ANY CONSEQUENCES!
       Tokimune, the main character, disobeys direct orders so often, I often wonder how this army stayed together in the first place. I've never been in the army myself but even I know that if you disobey a direct order, that's grounds for court martial. But it NEVER HAPPENS! If these characters can get away with so much, what's the point of these laws anyway. 

Anime to watch update.

So recently, I did a "What to watch" list of anime I was planning on checking out. I'm running a little bit behind on that but I can at least give you an update on two of them. By the way, read the original here.

Momo Kyun Sword

Status: DROPPED FROM QUEUE!

I didn't even make it through the first episode. The amount of crappy boob jokes far out balanced the amount of man orc. I wouldn't even recommend this for horny straight people. I honestly would worry about someone who had breasts that bounced like that. I would be afraid they were mutating from some weird breast cancer or something.

Sword Art Online II

Status: Looking Damn Fine!

I am a big fan of the first season of Sword Art, even though a lot of people didn't like the second part of season 1. So far from what I'm seeing from the second season though, it's different but in a good game. Since this season's game is a western release, it makes sense that it's a gun heavy game.

We really like guns. 

Anyway, I'm still making my way through my list but you can also assuming that if it's the second season of an anime and I haven't already watched it yet, it probably won't get watched. At least not until I can marathon it. 

Anime to watch summer 2014

If you're even remotely interested in Anime, it can be hard to decide what to watch. I'll give you a quick guide to the anime I'll be watching this summer.

Momo Kyun Sword

For those of you who don't know the story of Momotaros, I'll give a quick run down. Momotaros is a boy born from a Peach that flows down river. The boy grows up to become a famous swordsman. Normally, Momo is portrayed as a man but this anime decides to portray Momo as a girl. That part was the first to make me interested in this anime. The second was the high abundance of hot shirtless ogre men.

Yum!

Finally, this anime just looks cute. One thing that did make me laugh was the oddly peach shaped size of Momo's breasts.

Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!

This one is quite the mouthful but it's the second season of a show I have yet to watch, so technically I'll be watching the first season. This is a sort of an alternate reality to Fate/Stay Night, another anime I need to catch up on, that puts the characters as Magical Girls. I figured I should give this one a try since the only magical girl anime I watch is Sailor Moon....speaking of.

Sailor Moon Crystal

Yeah, anybody who has been reading my blog knew this was coming. NEXT!

Argevollen

From what I see, it looks like a pretty typical robot anime but I'm trying to watch more of this genra. Which reminds me, I need to catch up on Captain Earth.

Aldnoah.Zero

Unfortunately no video for this one but it's about martians vs humans so that's always fun. 

Rail Wars
Trains are huuuuuge in Japan. Like super huge. I mean, the newest Super Sentai is Train themed.

This one is about a security guard on a railway system that was never privatized. I like the animation so I'll give it a shot.

Akame Ga Kill!

This one is about awesome people with awesome hair doing awesome things. Well okay, there is also something about becoming an assassin and taking down the evil empire.

Sword Art Online II

If you haven't seen the first season of Sword Art Online, you need to go watch it. No seriously, go watch it. Like now. Minimize this window and go over to Hulu or Crunchy Roll. Watch Acell World to while your at it. They take place in the same universe.......seriously, go do it now. 

DRAMAtical Murder
This one is about a boy who gets forced into some online battle. Normally that alone would be kind par for the cource for me but when I saw that it was also classified under yaoi, I was intrigued.

Terror in Resonance
This one I'm a little bit on the fence on. Something about a terrorist attack and these two kids that are going to release there evil plans or something.

Tokyo Ghoul

Blood. Lots and lots of blood. The basic premises here is that a boy who nearly gets killed gets an organ transplant. Apparently that organ belonged to a supernatural creature that eats humans though. Fun for the whole family.

Black Butler: Book of Circus

If you haven't watched the original Black Butler, I highly recommend it. In the shadow of FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, this series is supposed to more closely follow the manga. 

Yamishibai 2

Would have to watch the first season of this one to but it looks interesting. Tells the story of Japanese folklore using cut away animation style.

Persona 4: The Golden Animation

Based on the Vita version of Persona 4. If you haven't seen the original anime, I highly recommend checking it out on Hulu. 

Re:_Hamatora Yet another I'll need to go watch the original season. Apparently its like X-men meets a detective agency.

Now of course there are a lot more out there that I didn't mention. If your interested in looking at more, I'll post a link to a few sites with more info. As always, please leave a comment about what series you are excited for or what series you think I should be watching. Also make sure to hit the share button. It really helps. Also make sure to follow me on Twitter or Google + for future updates as they happen as well as random bits of whit.

Kotaku Complete Summer List
Funimation Summer Simlecast Schedule
CrunchyRoll Summer Lineup

Anime Review: No Game No Life

Here's the thing when it comes to my boyfriend and I. We're much better at finishing an anime series if we're watching it separately. My boyfriend has a lot of free time when he's at work so he spends a lot of it watching Crunchy Roll, Netflix or Hulu on his Ipad. When he isn't here, I'll fill my time by watching anime. When we're together, we're often playing video games together. You can see why I haven't gotten very far in YuYu Hakusho since it's the anime we said we would watch together.

Anyway, my boyfriend told me to start watching a show he had binge watched called No Game No Life. I had heard of it from a Kotaku article but I never actually went out of my way to watch it. Since I was finished with Black Bullet and my interest with Captain Earth had tapered off a bit, I decided to give it a go.

The Good!

Animation

Right off the bat, the first thing that got my attention was the animation style. It's fast moving, intricate and downright fun. I'll go ahead and post the intro for those who are looking for a sneak peak.
I almost want to compare it FLCL, that is if there was a Diet version of that show and all its insanity. It's also just so intricate that you often worry your going to miss something. Makes me want to watch threw it again just to make sure I didn't miss anything.

The Story

A lot of shows I've been watching lately take way too long in order to get to the main story. One show like this would be the newest iteration of Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider Gaim. Don't get me wrong, I love Gaim. The only problem is that it took somewhere along the lines of 20+ episodes to finally figure out who the bad guy is and even then we're not quite sure just how bad they really are. Some shows can pull this off. Not a show like this. No Game No Life is very quick to set up what type of show it is and you have the full idea of what the characters goals are going to be from episode 3 on. I won't spoil it here since it's kind of fun to figure it out and since it only takes 3 episodes, it won't hurt you just to watch and find out.

The Bad

The Batman Syndrome

A big complaint about Batman is that he is always too prepared. He is always at least 13 steps ahead of everyone else in the DC universe. If I had to give one major complaint into the series, its that the brother/sister duo are able to plan WAY far in advance despite the fact that even they admit that a lot of times, they are blissfully unaware of all the facts. This could very easily be rectified later on but we will have to wait and see. 

Cliche Characters

The characters can act just smidgen cliche at times. Not by a large amount but it is noticeable if you watch a lot of anime. I wouldn't consider this a bad thing though. 

The Ugly

The Cliffhanger!

This series is based off a popular light novel series, something that is becoming incredibly popular lately. The first season is only 12 episodes long and the last episode only gives us a taste of what's more to come. The only problem is that I can't find any information out there in regards to weather or not there will be a second season or not. This is quite literally killing me. I want so bad to see what happens next and I don't see anything regarding a Season 2 announcement. I'm sending them a message letting them know I would watch a season 2. If you're interested, there twitter is @Madhouse_News . Granted it's all in Japanese but that's what Google translate is for.

Sailor Moon factoids!

For those of you not aware, Sailor Moon Crystal will be premiering this Friday, July 5th. Most of you will probably remember the anime from when they were kids and quite a few of you already know the trivia behind the show but there are a few things for those of you who haven't really done there research.

In the original manga/anime, Sailor Moon's civilian name is Usagi. 

It was pretty common to change the names of anime characters in the 90's when they were being localized. I can't be too picky about this though since Anime culture was just starting in the US and the localization team thought that kids wouldn't understand the cultural differences. Originally her name was Usagi, which literally translated from Japanese means bunny. She was named this because of her double pig tails. Fun fact, two of my favorite fictional characters are named Usagi. 

Although this Usagi is a little more bad ass. 

The original leader of the Sailor Scouts was Sailor Venus

One of the common themes of the Sailor Moon franchise was reincarnation. All of the planetary sailor scouts were actually reincarnated from a previous life. In fact, most of them already had there sailor powers in there past life. That is except for Sailor Moon. You see, Usagi was never meant to be a sailor scout, she was meant to be the future queen of the Moon Kingdom. Sailor Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus were tasked with being the princesses body guards and Sailor Venus was the head commander. 

In fact, she kind of still is in the Manga. While technically the team answers to Sailor Moon, when she's gone or has gone bonkers for her man, it's Sailor Venus who steps up and gives the orders. She was even the one to kill Queen Beryl. 

Sailor Neptune and Uranus were lesbians in the original version of the story. 

If you didn't know about this one, then you've been living under a rock. 

Sailor Saturn never had a transformation sequence in the anime!

As a person who loves transformation sequences, I was super pissed about this. If they were to fix one thing in Crystal, it has to be this. The closest we got was one that was featured in the video games and it sucked. It's not even worth putting it up. 

Season 5 of the anime was never originally translated

Season 5 was actually a little weird in that it flipped the Sailor Moon universe on its head. This season introduced a bunch of new sailor scouts. The three big ones were the Sailor Starlights. In the manga, they posed as a male pop group. In the anime though, they weren't just cross dressing. They literally swapped parts when they transformed. 

THEY'RE JUST SO DAMN SASSY!

This season also introduced the idea of Sailor Scouts as the enemy. Below you can see some of the major villains.

Iron Mouse

Tin Nyanko

Lead Crow

Aluminum Siren

And the Queen bitch Galaxia

The anime went a little crazy with it though, each time the enemy stole a star seed from a human, I'm not going to explain what a star seed is here, they would transform into a sailor scout monster. My favorite was Sailor Guts.

His attacks were all sweat based.

Final thoughts

I have always been a huge fan of Sailor Moon so I hope this gets you excited for the new show coming out. For those of you who don't know, the manga have been re released and you can buy them here and here. They are also streaming the original anime on Hulu and there are even plans to redub the original series to closer resemble the original language. With that, I leave you with one last video, a compilation of all the anime transformation sequences.

There is still a lot I didn't mention. If you have a factoid you would like to share, please leave it in the comments and as always, share with your friends. 

Remembering the Classics: Yu Yu Hakusho Part 1

For the last little bit, I've been desperately wanting to watch a bunch of anime from the 90's and the millennium. The one anime that has been really tickling my fancy for some reason is Yu Yu Hakusho. I originally avoided this anime like the plague because I had an acquaintance in college who claimed that the show was based on real events, that she was a reincarnated angel and that her friend was dating Edward from Twilight. She was also convinced that there was a gang of Vampires invading Moscow.

Vampires EVERYWHERE!

Honestly, the only reason I even knew her was because she was roommates with one of my friends. At least she was fun to hang out with during Halloween.

Anyway, I found out that the DVD's for the anime are pretty cheap so my boyfriend and I decided to pick up season 1. We watched all of disk 1. So I decided to share my thoughts on the first two story arcs.

Arc I: Our Main Character Dies!

Our story starts off with the death of our main character, Yusuke Urameshi. Normally, Yusuke is a cranky, school skipping, self identified miscreant. However at the last minute, he jumps in the way of a car, seen above, in order to save the life of a child. The crash proves fatal and Yusuke soon finds himself looking down at the scene. The only one able to see him is a mysterious woman named Botan. 

She rides a boat ore like a witch rides a broomstick. It makes sense in a weird way. She is meant to guide lost souls across the river Styx after all. Anyway, Botan tells Yusuke that he wasn't supposed to jump in the way of the car and since they weren't exactly expecting him to die so soon, they don't have a spot set up for him in the after world. Because of this and his selfless act, he is given the option to go through a trial in order for him to possibly get his life back. Originally Yusuke refuses, thinking that there is no one way anyone in his life would miss him. He soon finds out that he in fact has 4 people who miss him.

His alcoholic mother....

I couldn't find a picture of her crying. 

His love interest, Keiko....

I'm not sure why though.

His wannabe rival, Kazuma....

DON'T DO DRUGS!

and finally the school principle.

Anyway, after seeing so many people mourn his death, he decided to go along with the trial. Yusuke is then wisked away to the spirit world where he then meets Koenma, son of King Enma and currently in charge while his father is away. 

He's a little short. 

That Egg he's holding there is a part of Yusuke's trial, he has to raise the spirit egg to birth where it will either become some sort of spirit guide or an evil head biting creature depending on what type of emotions he feeds it. Anyway, episodes 3-5 are pretty much just character development while Yusuke tries to be a good parent for the spirit egg. I won't spoil the end of the arc here but basically Yusuke has to decide whether to save his kind of sort of but not really girlfriend or be reincarnated. Despite his choice for the first, he still comes back to life though.

This arc is very weird in that it doesn't really have ANYTHING to do with the feel of the show later on, when Yusuke becomes a spirit detective. It still gives us an interesting introduction into our characters though with even more on the way in the next arc. It definitely had a few funny moments and kept me entertained but I feel like it could have been compressed a bit more. The real reason we watch shows like Yu Yu Hakusho is for the action. Luckily the next arc goes a long way in giving us more of that. More on that next time. 

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to leave your comments and criticisms in the comments and remember to share with your friends.